Conspiracy
by Sardaukar
Summary: A very short story of a mainstream Inquisitor facing a dillema of loyalty. The people are not so much the characters as the subversive nature of the Inquisition itself.


CONSPIRACY  
Based on the game Inquisitor created by Games Workshop  
  
  
Aquistos had long stared at the small idol sitting on his ancient desk. Sitting on a flat prism of plascrete, it was an abstract statuette of the almighty Emperor.   
"Such an artist," thought Aquistos, "and such imagination, though he has probably been dead for centuries now ,possibly burned for his blasphemy but his works permitted to stay. That's what happens when the ministorum is not the first to see your work."  
It was really more like four images as one single figure, all gathered around an obelisk. In the front, foremost above the others was the Emperor, his form carved from the finest platinum. He looked as he did in the current age, withered and ancient, but still vigorous and full of unnatural vitality, yet immobile. To his right was one of the great Astartes, smaller than the Emperor, symbolic of their being lesser yet loyal to him. He looked down as if scorned, but pride was still carved into his gold face. His bolter was at his side, his sword held loosely in the other hand. In silver, on the opposite side, was an Imperial Guard officer, a colonel, likely. He also looked down, but also featured a proud face. His chainsword was held straight up, in disciplined military fashion.  
Held in a half-bell of polished marble, there was apparently a fourth figure behind the obelisk but inside the bell, and was as such invisible. It mattered little to Aquistos, for the model was merely an old curio, a piece of art for looking at and nothing more.   
Aquistos looked at the weapon held in a compact temporal stasis field. It was twelve paces from his desk, as he preferred to stay away from it as of yet. It was nearly a meter in length, a great blade of ancient design. It bore a slight resemblance to ancient Egyptian, old Terran design. However, there was nothing sane or human about the sword apart from that. Etched on the blade, in glowing script were a series of unholy runes. They writhed with a life of their own, yet still appeared to be carved into the metal blade. The grip was made of flayed man's skin tied in place with tendons. The pommel was a disc, bearing the strange shape of the changer of the ways. Tzeentch, one of the many-cursed names of Chaos, a name whose sound would drive lesser men to the brink of mental oblivion and beyond.   
It was once the property of a petty warlord, a savage who ruled his primitive little world of Gydarda with the aid of dark powers. Aquistos needed merely to summon his pet assassin. The Eversor disemboweled the man and hung him from the gates to his shabby fortress for the vermin and the carrion-eaters. It was not that Aquistos couldn't have beaten the warlord. On the contrary, it would have been a boring fight for him. It was perfectly fine for an Eversor, a creature which knew neither the concept of time nor boredom.  
The sword was the only thing of serious import from the entire purging. The savage that previously owned it had no idea how to unlock it's true power, which was something that Aquistos meant to find for himself.  
He knew that it was safe. Aquistos knew all of the incantations, and had acquired all of the runes of warding, the balms and polishes, and all of the spiritual baubles needed to safely neutralize the possessive demon-spirit that lived within the weapon. By this point, it was routine for him, although he would never make it over to the sword.  
Aquistos had served with the Inquisition for nearly seventy years, since very early in his third decade of life. He always found himself drawn to the Radicals, although he refused to make a political distinction, fearing that it would completely ruin his stance with some parts of the Inquisition. He was wise to not do so. Maintaining the position of a moderate radical, Aquistos had many colleagues from both the puritan and radical camps.  
Aquistos found it easy to believe in the harsh reality of Exterminatus. Level-headed, he saw the world as black and white and all matters having two sides with no middle ground. He was glad that he was not required to eradicate the people of Gydarda , however. Their corruption was so limited that the slaying of a few individuals freed them from the grip of true evil. Aquistos lived by that ideology, and even had it carved in high gothic along the edge of his desk; "WHAT ONE OUGHT TO DO AND ONE MUST DO ARE NOT ONE IN THE SAME."  
With a swish of his silk cloak, he rose from his seat. Yet at the same time, his long clothes caught onto the unusual statue and dragged it off of the table. It teetered for a moment before crashing to the floor, it's marble bell shattered. Aquistos looked down at the statue, which had landed colonel-up. Even the runes on the sword blade seems to be startled at the sudden loud noise. Aquistos bent down slowly to pick up the little statue. He slowly turned it in his hands until he saw the part which had never before been seen. It was a reaper, standing on a base upon which was etched the seal of the Inquisition. Below that seal was carved the name of one world; Istvaan.  
"The world that Horus virus-bombed to begin the heresy? What kind of blasphemy is this?"  
It began to appear as a nightmarish image in Aquistos' mind. Fields of dead, dead upon dead and being feasted upon by the rats which had somehow survived. Some had been only mildly maimed by the lethal virus and their faces were still somewhat visible, although parts of them had been rotted away almost instantly. One of them spoke, a voice so eerie and reed-like that it was impossible to tell if it was male or female.  
"Why did we have to die? Why us? Why we hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of dead? We who served so faithfully to our Emperor, dead for the sins of one?  
Aquistos was enraged. It was either the thoughts of another Inquisitor being used to subvert Aquistos' own thoughts, or it was vile, demonic trickery. Aquistos threw the statue with all of his might at the door. It created a dent and a loud clang when it hit the floor.  
"Because that is the way that it must be sometimes!"  
Foulness! And the cowardice!  
Aquistos stood up with the statue in his hand. Inverting it to look at it's base, he recognized the personal seal of Inquisitor De Vald. De Vald was as radical as the Inquisition got, and it was rumored that he believed in coexistence with Chaos, not to exploit Chaos and in doing sow the seeds of it's own destruction. The man was a fanatic in an organization of fanatics, and now, Aquistos was convinced, he was a heretic.  
"Ansk, enter," Aquistos hissed over the intercom.   
Ansk, his personal aide opened the door and walked into the room. Ansk was a strange creature, just over a meter in height. His mind was psychically retarded to the point of being incapable of receiving telepathic suggestion. He was also deaf, and yet had a machine in his brain allowing him to hear only what Aquistos said to him.  
"Master, shall I clean this mess?" Ansk asked with a high-pitched voice.  
"No. Remove this filthy weapon from my sight, I wish never to see it again. Dispatch it to the Malleus to purge it or whatever, but get rid of it."  
"Will that be all?"   
"And summon my entourage. I have a matter to discuss with Inquisitor De Vald," Aquistos said, carefully placing the statue on his desk.   
Ansk knew that matters to be discussed, when they involved Aquistos, were really vendettas to be settled. Ansk smiled a tiny grin, bowed, and grabbed the miniature stasis field, pushing the demon blade out of the room.  
Aquistos flipped a switch that shut and locked the door. He cast the statue across the floor, skidding to a halt a few meters from the wall.   
"Foulness," he said.  
Aquistos drew his plasma pistol and pointed it at the figure on the floor. With a squeeze of the trigger, the heretical symbol was no more.  
  
After some brief studying, Aquistos found that De Vald was on the world Garx IV, a relatively small yet densely populated planet in the Segmentum Tempestus. His men were with him, but so were Aquistos'. Only one of the men would leave Garx IV alive. Only their faith would be able to decide whom.   
  



End file.
